Explore the evidence.
Understand the reach.

Illegal occupation of buildings referred as hijacked building has emerged as a critical urban crime phenomenon in South Africa’s Johannesburg inner city area, particularly within Region F, which is a designated administrative area within Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality in South Africa. This article presents a case study analysis of property fraud, examining the socio-economic, legal, and institutional factors that enable its persistence. Drawing from qualitative data, the study explores how hijackers exploit systemic vulnerabilities and abandoned properties. The findings reveal that hijacking of buildings is orchestrated by organized syndicates using sophisticated methods such as title deed fraud, impersonation, and intimidation. The study advocates for a multi-pronged response that includes legal reform, enhanced inter-agency collaboration to halt hijacking of buildings. The study advances knowledge of the difficulties that South African cities face and provides useful suggestions for legislation and enforcement by placing hijacked assets within larger framework of urban crime.

In South Africa, extortion and protection racketeering are widespread, particularly affecting small businesses and rural communities, exacerbating social vulnerabilities. In the Eastern Cape, women face a disturbing trend where they are coerced into paying "protection fees" to avoid threats of rape, rendering them in a state of helplessness. Extortion has permeated all sectors of the South African economy, from construction to entertainment (nightclubs), and extortion tactics among rural women have been on the rise.  The aim of the paper is to explore how gender, poverty, and crime interact to oppress these women, as well as the weaknesses in law enforcement that allow protection fees to persist. The paper employed documentary analysis of media reports, government publications, and academic studies to understand the socio-economic and legal contexts surrounding these practices. The theory of learnt helplessness and hopelessness is applied to explain the psychological effects of repeated extortion on rural women, leading to feelings of powerlessness. Findings reveal that these women experience heightened psychological distress, social isolation, and economic disempowerment due to ongoing threats of violence. The study highlights how their financial independence and social roles are weakened, making them more vulnerable to gender-based violence. The paper recommends urgent action by law enforcement and traditional leaders to protect women in these rural communities and to develop strategies to combat extortion and gender-based violence.

The South African communities are being buffeted by illicit drug markets. While the dynamics of drug markets are shaped by a range of domestic political and socioeconomic factors, these states have been rendered vulnerable also by their proximity to major transnational drug trafficking routes that link illicit drug production origin points with regional and global marketplaces. Cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, cannabis and a wide array of synthetic substances flow through the region along various routes, exploiting vulnerabilities in port facilities and interdiction agencies, and connecting the substances, their markets and their organized criminal beneficiaries. The results show that illicit drug detection systems may be inadequate due to a lack of experience with online fraud. From a South African standpoint, the study found that there is a high risk due to a lack of legal regulation. Maritime Based Drug-Trafficking in South African Communities are encouraged to acquire and develop Maritime expertise because the South Africa communities lacks these specialists. To achieve the study's goals, a literature analysis was used, and secondary data was evaluated and deconstructed. This paper major goal was to look at the causes and motivations behind Maritime Based Drug-Trafficking. The inquiry concentrated on young people's excessive and unusual drugs and alcohol consumption. The study made recommendations for potential research topics that the South Africa communities could look into in order to create and improve Maritime models.

Indonesia's welfare state has not been realized to date because of many challenges, obstacles, or threats. One of the many challenges is illegal circulation (without a permit) and drug abuse, which is increasingly massive and systematic. Drug crimes have been carried out systematically, massively, and continue with the target of thousands and even tens of thousands of Indonesian people becoming users and dealers every year. As a result of drugs, every year, 15,000 young people in Indonesia die from drugs. Even the data from the National Narcotics Agency (BNN) shows 40-50 people per day die from drugs, and losses due to drugs reach Rp 63.1 trillion annually. This paper aims to build a critical approach to the function of BNN in preventing and eradicating drug criminal actions in Indonesia.

This article delves into the analysis of informal commerce as a means of power created from the street vendor's perspective. This paper aims to evaluate the expressions of the itinerant executors of the practice of informal trade as a means of creating power. To do this, the conception of analysis, using the local practices referring to informal trade, were analyzed as a means of economic sustenance and in the same way, understood among selected groups as illegal. However independent of the local context and the established place. The thesis that follows is that the street trade has a functional character in the obtaining of power by groups; ideological promotion and not just an economic justification. The main findings and results of the research demonstrated that the decisions of the executors of the practice are permeated by a motivation for the illegal practice, which wanders between what is economically necessary and politically permissible. The situation that determines the functionality and applicability of informal trade acts, underestimates compliance with the existence of local trade policies and regulations of social life and instead, they are recognized as legitimate as they belong to groups of political control. Therefore, it contributes to the defense of the hypothesis, based on demonstrating that the practice of ambulance is presented as a valve for attention to unemployment, while it is tolerated as a means of opportunity to the creation of political power independent of the local or regional context.

Illegal occupation of buildings referred as hijacked building has emerged as a critical urban crime phenomenon in South Africa’s Johannesburg inner city area, particularly within Region F, which is a designated administrative area within Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality in South Africa. This article presents a case study analysis of property fraud, examining the socio-economic, legal, and institutional factors that enable its persistence. Drawing from qualitative data, the study explores how hijackers exploit systemic vulnerabilities and abandoned properties. The findings reveal that hijacking of buildings is orchestrated by organized syndicates using sophisticated methods such as title deed fraud, impersonation, and intimidation. The study advocates for a multi-pronged response that includes legal reform, enhanced inter-agency collaboration to halt hijacking of buildings. The study advances knowledge of the difficulties that South African cities face and provides useful suggestions for legislation and enforcement by placing hijacked assets within larger framework of urban crime.

In South Africa, extortion and protection racketeering are widespread, particularly affecting small businesses and rural communities, exacerbating social vulnerabilities. In the Eastern Cape, women face a disturbing trend where they are coerced into paying "protection fees" to avoid threats of rape, rendering them in a state of helplessness. Extortion has permeated all sectors of the South African economy, from construction to entertainment (nightclubs), and extortion tactics among rural women have been on the rise.  The aim of the paper is to explore how gender, poverty, and crime interact to oppress these women, as well as the weaknesses in law enforcement that allow protection fees to persist. The paper employed documentary analysis of media reports, government publications, and academic studies to understand the socio-economic and legal contexts surrounding these practices. The theory of learnt helplessness and hopelessness is applied to explain the psychological effects of repeated extortion on rural women, leading to feelings of powerlessness. Findings reveal that these women experience heightened psychological distress, social isolation, and economic disempowerment due to ongoing threats of violence. The study highlights how their financial independence and social roles are weakened, making them more vulnerable to gender-based violence. The paper recommends urgent action by law enforcement and traditional leaders to protect women in these rural communities and to develop strategies to combat extortion and gender-based violence.

The South African communities are being buffeted by illicit drug markets. While the dynamics of drug markets are shaped by a range of domestic political and socioeconomic factors, these states have been rendered vulnerable also by their proximity to major transnational drug trafficking routes that link illicit drug production origin points with regional and global marketplaces. Cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, cannabis and a wide array of synthetic substances flow through the region along various routes, exploiting vulnerabilities in port facilities and interdiction agencies, and connecting the substances, their markets and their organized criminal beneficiaries. The results show that illicit drug detection systems may be inadequate due to a lack of experience with online fraud. From a South African standpoint, the study found that there is a high risk due to a lack of legal regulation. Maritime Based Drug-Trafficking in South African Communities are encouraged to acquire and develop Maritime expertise because the South Africa communities lacks these specialists. To achieve the study's goals, a literature analysis was used, and secondary data was evaluated and deconstructed. This paper major goal was to look at the causes and motivations behind Maritime Based Drug-Trafficking. The inquiry concentrated on young people's excessive and unusual drugs and alcohol consumption. The study made recommendations for potential research topics that the South Africa communities could look into in order to create and improve Maritime models.

Indonesia's welfare state has not been realized to date because of many challenges, obstacles, or threats. One of the many challenges is illegal circulation (without a permit) and drug abuse, which is increasingly massive and systematic. Drug crimes have been carried out systematically, massively, and continue with the target of thousands and even tens of thousands of Indonesian people becoming users and dealers every year. As a result of drugs, every year, 15,000 young people in Indonesia die from drugs. Even the data from the National Narcotics Agency (BNN) shows 40-50 people per day die from drugs, and losses due to drugs reach Rp 63.1 trillion annually. This paper aims to build a critical approach to the function of BNN in preventing and eradicating drug criminal actions in Indonesia.

This article delves into the analysis of informal commerce as a means of power created from the street vendor's perspective. This paper aims to evaluate the expressions of the itinerant executors of the practice of informal trade as a means of creating power. To do this, the conception of analysis, using the local practices referring to informal trade, were analyzed as a means of economic sustenance and in the same way, understood among selected groups as illegal. However independent of the local context and the established place. The thesis that follows is that the street trade has a functional character in the obtaining of power by groups; ideological promotion and not just an economic justification. The main findings and results of the research demonstrated that the decisions of the executors of the practice are permeated by a motivation for the illegal practice, which wanders between what is economically necessary and politically permissible. The situation that determines the functionality and applicability of informal trade acts, underestimates compliance with the existence of local trade policies and regulations of social life and instead, they are recognized as legitimate as they belong to groups of political control. Therefore, it contributes to the defense of the hypothesis, based on demonstrating that the practice of ambulance is presented as a valve for attention to unemployment, while it is tolerated as a means of opportunity to the creation of political power independent of the local or regional context.